Research

Cosmic filaments are vast structures of galaxies and dark matter that form the backbone of the universe's large-scale structure. Intertwined like a colossal cosmic web, these thread-like strands span hundreds of millions of light-years, bridging the immense voids that dominate deep space. Their existence was first uncovered in the late 1970s and 1980s through groundbreaking three-dimensional redshift surveys, which revolutionized our understanding of cosmology by revealing that the universe is not smoothly distributed, but rather organized into a complex network. Today, astrophysicists and cosmologists study these filaments to understand the behavior of dark matter, the evolution of pristine intergalactic gas, and the gravitational forces that dictate the birth of galaxies.

● Quenching in filament proximate mergers

Compare quenching proxies (e.g. D4000 index) of merging pairs as function of d_filament, controlling for stellar mass and cluster proximity. Tests whether the filament environment specifically drives quenching in merger pairs. This is a gap I found in Dulcien et al. (2026)

● Disentangling filament vs cluster influence on mergers

Bin mergers in (d_filament, d_cluster) space; partial correlations to separate independent effects. Tests whether filament proximity has any residual effect on merger rate after controlling cluster distance.

● Galaxy morphology as function of filament distance

Use Galaxy Zoo morphological classifications to test whether the fraction of early-type galaxies increases closer to filaments, after accounting for stellar mass and local density. With tidal torque theory predicting that galaxy spin should align with nearby filaments, morphology can serve as a rough proxy of this effect.

Right now, I'm working on these projects — in the near future, I will link my project reports to these descriptions.